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Entries tagged with - recommendation

For four years, she's been posting Guardian comic every week. She's up to 111 pages.

The story focuses on relationships between female characters. On every page. From Lady Ginnem's mentorship of Lulu to Ginnem's kickass sister Imogen to Yuna's friendship with Valefor to NoPantsCrusader/LadyYocun'sBiggestFan the nuanced portrayal of Lulu's friendship with Yuna, which evolves and grows over time.

It's a well-written, convincing love story in which the protagonists are not het and not in a sexual relationship. It shows, not tells that female friendships can be every bit as powerful as the standard "boy meets girl" romance.

Just as with the game of FFX, the bulk of the story is actually flashback, recalled at the end of the journey. The "present" is the scene in which Lulu volunteers to be Yuna's fayth. That scene is reprised at the beginning of each chapter, only now it's ticked forward to show that Lulu IS going to become Yuna's fayth, in this AU.

Yet reader comments often seem oblivious to all of the above.

Readers are excited when Tidus shows up, because now, at last, the story can be about Tidus/Yuna. (It hasn't been.) Some post a burst of Tidus/Yuna art right after she posts an emotionally powerful Lulu & Yuna scene.

There are comments like "whoa whoa, Lulu, that almost sounds gay" when her headspace-narrative describes her feelings for Yuna.

Commenters jokingly scold Lulu for being sharp-tongued at Wakka, because she shouldn't be talking that way to her future husband. Did they play FFX?

Today someone wants to know if/when Minty's going to get to FFX-2, because this fan can't wait to see Lulu spawning the Wakkababy.

Even though Mintywolf's already showed that Lulu's going to become the Final Aeon, diverging from the X-2 storyline.Even though Mintywolf's been focusing on female friendship and cuddles.Even though Mintywolf's been avoiding sexual content all along.

It is difficult for me not to snark at readers so desperately trying to find the het in her story, so determined not to see what the story is about, and has been about, for one hundred pages.

When we were talking about this, Minty pointed out that "where is the straight?" comments on stories about female relationships are hardly unique to Guardian: Sister Claire's had such comments just this week.

I'm not surprised that these comments happen, of course. I'm just very frustrated on her behalf that people can't see, appreciate and engage in what she's trying to do, and has been doing very effectively, for years.

Okay, so. Rina has just finished Final Fantasy X-2 and posted thoughts about it.

And she quoth:

...Granted, this might be because the thing I want most out of this fandom right now is the Crimson Squad and YRP having fabulous adventures on an airship with side helpings of Rikku/Gippal, Paine/Nooj and Yuna/Baralai (also accepting Paine/Rikku), so if that exists in a way that is good, hook a girl up, mmk?

And I know that stuff is out there. I remember it. I've read it in dribs and drabs over the years. Yet when I review my Final Fantasy X/X-2 recs, I'm not seeing much of that.

Still, I have some pointers, and I hope people who know the fandom better will share more recs in comments.

Owlmoose is the Queen of Final Fantasy X-2 and Nooj/Paine in particular, with a little Baralai/Gippal and Yuna/Baralai on the side, and some Rikku/Gippal in there somewhere. And since this is my own personal blog I don't feel bad about shilling friends. A lot.

The trouble is, I read most of her amazeballs stuff years ago. There's tons. But these stick in my fuzzy memory.

And then she's done some recent 500-word prompt thingies with a few years' more experience in writing.

SO. What else. WHERE IS IT. It's odd but I don't recall many well-written Celsius or Crimson Squad things.

So, for example, this isn't Gullwings, but it's good:

Jebus Creiss' The Seeker Files, Barthello/Dona (estranged), T, 22K words, A surprisingly good story from Barthello's POV?! with a lot of the other X-2 cast, set 6 months after FFX-2. Extremely convincing and chewy worldbuilding.

And in a similar worldbuilding vein, KJ created an excellent bridge story from X to X-2:

Aftermath, Beclem-POV, 42000 words, picking up the pieces at the end of X, explaining how Beclem met Nooj and the Youth League began, meta on spheres and sphere hunters.

Oh here's one I'd assume would be good because of the author, but I haven't read it, just spotted it while hunting?

The Lost Village, T, by astrangerenters. "When Gippal leads a Machine Faction team to excavate a previously hidden town near Lake Macalania, the Gullwings come along for a little fun and treasure hunting."

Hrm. I could go on but it's useless for me to rec stuff I haven't read; you can hunt, too. So I'm instead going to ask people to post recs in comments to this post.

I will append some addendums. I haven't specifically covered the Gullwings, but I've written in the X-2 timeframe (or an AU version), pulling out things I like and ignoring the rest.

Firstly a large pile of Lucil/Elma drabbles because prior to FFXIII they were the closest I could find to a canon lesbian couple. Headcanons occur. Also smut. Also crack.

An Auron/Lulu badfic, Til Death Do Us Part,T, 13K words, in which I indulged in all! the! clichés! Swashbuckling and Twue Wuv occurs. It's not my best writing, but I bring it up because I started by trying to imagine what would follow the Gullwings once Paine went off with Nooj, and I wound up with Yuna in charge, Rikku and Tidus as her seconds, in a way that lets Yuna and Rikku be awesome and Tidus not be an ass.

Love Her and Despair- among many other threads, there's Captain Gippal, smuggler distributor of merchandise, and a Paine/Nooj, Baralai/Paine sideplot.

Everybody get over to Sev's journal for a glorious Final Fantasy commentfic attack. She had stress today and called for minific prompts, and has been writing brief snippets of fic to everyone's insane prompts, and there's a full-on brainstorming session of Ashelia the Vampire Slayer happening over on one comment, and Auron is giving everyone (even Quistis!) detentions in another comment, and I don't quite know what's happening with that dolphin but I'm not going to ask... Er. Anyway. Go join in. Whatever fandom you love, it's there somewhere in small bite-sized bits. Or just add to the brainstorming and general crack.

I'm still sloooooowly digging my way through FFIII again and still need to create write-ups for what I've done so far.

But in the meantime. Sev and Rina have posted their playthroughs (both hilarious as usual) on moogle_university, plus some thoughtful meta and commentary about FFIII and the early FFs in genera.

Here's all their posts on FFIII. I left a loooong rambling comment on Sev's post about early FFs, for what it's worth. We're discussing story and characterization and early job / character classes and the oddities of black and white magic.

Which all sounds boring, but is anything but. Go look! And be amused by their zany summaries of the games!

leyna has just served up a five-star banquet of incredible FF fanart, paintings that include Balthier, Fang, Lulu — who should now be in a crossover adventuring party full of witty banter and icy put-downs — plus cameos by Lightning, Squall, Namingway (who?) and some Type-O character.

It illustrates a scene in the "Eight of Swords" chapter of Love Her and Despair, when Yu Yevon clamped down hard on Lulu for defying its will and taking too many liberties with Sin to aid her friends. As usual, the dream-interior of Sin is fashioned from its prisoner's hopes, loves, and fears.

ETA: "all the grandeur of some young, disheveled god of poorly thought out ideas."

ETA the umpteenth: READ THIS STORY. It starts out as a slapstick comedy and turns into an edge-of-your-seat heartwrenching adventure with some real meat to it. One of those "more canon than canon" fics that fleshes out the world and gives the characters their due.

It's worth digging through her whole journal. For Final Fantasy fans, I want to recommend a couple of Fang paintings, one with Vanille and one sparring practice scene with Lightning in which, so help me, Fang is tickling that exposed bit of tummy on Ms. Supersoldier's uniform. My interpretation is that Fang is attempting to seduce or simply pester, while Lightning doesn't know whether to break character and squirm or just chop off the offending foot.

However, it's the Vanille/Fang "You Are My Only Home" painting that I especially wish to rec. Break out the angst piano, folks; it's the Last Lesbians in the World.

ETA: I just looked at the Fang/Vanille again, and you should go. Look at it now. Even if you don't bally know the characters. The colors are gorgeous.

In other news, I have a happy dilemma: do I post all 4800 5100 words of Chapter 49 or break it into two installments? I may go with the two-installments thing for mugs and because that way I can keep working on the next chapter with more lead time. On the other hand, it really doesn't have a comfortable breakpoint.

I was looking for a Refia cosplay and found this page. As I suspected, Refia's default character outfit translates into garb that's actually comfortable, plausible, and provides coverage, unlike most female RPG character designs. (Upscaling the featureless gold medallions over the pockets was a miss, but that could be fixed.) I covet Refia's boots.

ETA: Her Lulu-Moogle has a Lulu-doll and mog wing tattoos. THIS. THIS:

Also this one of the Farplane (Warning, some very NSFW fanart elsewhere on that site, but that particular artist's work is safe. I am keenly disappointed to find that this is not, in fact, Auron, Braska and Jecht going clubbing.)